mBrewer

Hmmm, I should've updated before now. I meant to update when I got off the AT, and... again when I moved into SF... and maybe again when... yeah.

Ummm, yeah. I ended up hiking 1500 miles on the AT, but stopped in MA due to time limitations. It was more fun to hike it slow and see things than to run through. Jess got off at 1000 miles and then went to work on a farm in North Virginia, where she's been having a great time learning how to farm. We both had an amazing time on the trail, and life really hasn't been the same since. "My world's on fire, how 'bout yours, that's the way I like it and I'll never get bored" comes to mind.

I now live in the Mission in SF with cpride, Jess is moving in next month. Still working at Google, My new job relates to webcrawling (still SRE). I'm doing parkour, running, biking, exploring the city, meeting new people, dancing, going to crazy music concerts, bringing home hobos, and generally running about and having a good time.

Going back to AT stuff, we finally have some photos up (but not all)
Jess just posted the best from the middle period of photos (about the
middle 750 miles).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smalladventures/sets/72157622620323846/
All of them we have uploaded so far are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smalladventures/collections/72157621147753919/
www.smalladventures.net under trail-logs has all of the info we've so-far posted about the trail - including photos links.

Anyway, I should really update this thing for major life changes, rather than like 3 major life changes (finished 1500 miles on AT, moved to the mission in SF, changed positions at work, dating Jess...).

I'm hiking the AT!
Sorry this post is so late, I started on april 16'th. Anyone curious on progress etc. see www.smalladventures.net - it actually links to a livejournal account being updated by Jess' (my girlfriend's, for anyone not following the gossip) mother.

Anyway, life is great, but I gotta get the heck out of this town, I'm currently in domascus and need to get on the trail tonight. ttyl all!

I gave up and changed my phone number to the one I've been using for about a
week. Here it is:
650-861-0224

My current contact information etc. is of course on my/jess' website.
Note - the old URL is being phased out, we're now using "www.smalladventures.net"
Also, we switched to flickr image hosting so hopefully images will appear on the site soon. To this end all my photos, and photos for the site (and maybe some of jess'), are posted on http://flickr.com/photos/smalladventures

I tried to migrate the phone number but failed. So I'm spamming everywhere, sorry.

I'm going to remind people again to please call my new number. I think most people have gotten it now.

Also, I put up a website for anyone curious "www.boxxen.org". It's not amazing, and YES there are spelling errors... lots and lots of them. I will get around to correcting it... someday... or maybe I won't out of spite :-b. I need to put more stuff up, like finishing the kernel spec that's up there, and putting tons more backpacking info up, and and... oh man.

Anyway, life is still awesome. Lots of cool people. I'm playing frisbee twice a week, and playing guitar on the lawn a lunch with other people once a week. I went to a jam session last week and met cool people to jam with in the future. I went to the makers fair this weekend, and I mean... what is there to say about an event involving fire, a working model of babbages difference engine, a model navel battle with remote control ships ACTUALLY sinking each other, fire, robots, working steam powered cars... and oh yeah... FIRE! I walked to the nearby climbing wall on sunday (4.5 miles away) and went climbing. I am week! I need to climb more again. The week before I did about 30 miles or so down in Santa Cruz with 'rhetta. It was a good time, the wind though made us turn around, and pelted us somewhat painfully with sand. It's gorgeous out there. I got sunburned because I'm stupid, but it mostly turned to tan, not much peeling. I was shirtless but wearing a backpack, so now I have a very funny tanline :-b

I'm going backpacking with Jess in seattle in a couple of weeks. I can't wait. I'm trying to get back to walking a bit before that because I've only been biking and running, and the muscles are a bit different. I'm also spending a week just working in the google seattle office up there first (I'm getting there around 1pm I think on saturday the... 18'th?). Thus, I'll have time to hang out with people up there. So seattle people, come play!

I'm getting close to paying off my college loans (very soon now) and then I will start seriously looking at cars, rather than idly looking. That's exciting.

That's pretty much my life. Yup... just thaught I'd put up an update.

Friday afternoon we had a social TGIF, I ran into a few interesting people, had a beer but wandered off after a bit. That evening DFontain and I drove up to SF and met up with Em and Alanv for dinner (yay Soba!), then dropped Alanv and collected Shiue (with much getting lost on the way) to go dancing. Em informed me that the single beer had made me a bit more bouncy than normal. We went to Mighty where they were playing breakbeats. We had a few drinks, of which I drank the bulk, presumably staying bouncy? I don't know. Shiue left after a while and Dfontain, Em and I danced until 3am (that being about 4 hours'ish I think?) and finally went home pretty tired and rather sweaty. It was wonderfully awesome. YAY dancing! I must do this more often. There is not enough time to do enough things more often, this is frustrating.

On Saturday I went up to SF and went bed shopping with Em. She acquired a very nice mattress actually. I find it interesting that very few of the mattresses they had either of us actually liked. They all have squishy pillow tops that seem to contribute nothing to overall comfort and just make the top feel "soft". But then you sink in and that makes your feet kinda high and twists your hips a little funny. It turns out that only the "lower end" of mattresses come without pillow tops these days... seems very silly to me.

I am still trying to acquire a futon. Or rather, I am trying again. I sent some E'mails this evening to craig's-list people. I think if these E'mails don't pan out I will just give in and buy a new futon mattress this week to sleep on and continue looking for a second mattress and frame for the living room. Mattresses do actually wear out, so I feel a little less bad buying that new than I would a frame.

Otherwise, life as usual. Work as usual. Not enough sleep while on call due to lack of internets at home, snowboarding is awesome, writing some code, funny laptop problems, funny WAN card problems, got clipless pedals, more WAN card problems, some more WAN card problems, deleting some code at work, and that brings us up to date. Life is good. I need dinner.

Well... apparently you can bend a bike fork.
It figures, my first experience with a cyclocross bike, and I bend the fork in a minor fall... so much for "Oh yeah, it's tough enough, you won't break it"... lol

on Thursday I was biking to work, and there was a light sprinkle. I was making a right hand turn on a sidewalk and my front wheel lost traction, and I fell over. No big deal really right? I didn't hit anything, and was completely uninjured.

Well, I pick my bike up and the front wheel won't spin because one brake is jammed against the rim, and, the left shifter/brake unit is spun about 10 degrees inwards from where it should be, and the rim looks basically undamaged as does the shifter. After releasing the brakes it turned out that the rim was very slightly out of true, but very little, and the wheel would still roll with the brake released, but the fork had in fact twisted, and the handlebar to fork mounting (the stem) hadn't budged!

I took it down to the bike shop today and they looked a bit confused. It's a steel fork for what's known to be one of the tougher cyclocross frames on the market. They said that it was actually the "crown" that was bent, that is the bit that attaches the two tines to the steering shaft. They are going to see if they can get it under warranty, but since it's a crash it's quite unlikely. So, hopefully they'll get it fixed "soon".

So apparently it IS possible to bend a steel fork using only pressure from a bike rim WITHOUT bending the rim significantly.... who knew? I guess I win or something.

So, I don't mean to post too often, but I feel this is somewhat noteworth.
Anyone hear about that plane, which flew from Las Vegas to Bradley international in Hartford CT? The one that was landed in Omaha Nebraska? Well... I was on that flight.

So, we're flying along, and I noticed a major change in the engine sound for about 5 minutes or so and was kindof confused. Finally the Pilot told us that we were landing in Omaha because some drunk person who missed the flight in Las Vegas had threatened to blow up the airplane. And that no-one was allowed to use the bathrooms. So... we landed in Omaha, and taxi'd off to the middle of nowhere. Then... we sat there... for a very long time.
Finally they had us get out of the plane, but leave our luggage. It was 10F outside, so they let us take jackets etc. They bussed us off to a warehouse where we sat for a while, and they gave us chips, candy, and water, and finally let everyone pee. While we were off the plane they ran dogs through it to check for explosives and decided everything was chill. They then bussed us back over to the airplane. The airplane then taxi'd over to the airport, got refueled and crud, and took off again.
Except that the entire affair was completely rediculas (I cracked up when he announced it), it was handled fairly well.

It's very interesting to watch people in situations like this. Lots of people make slightly off-color jokes, they get a lot more friendly. Suddenly I was having a lively conversation with the woman sitting next to me on the plane, all about what each of us do and where were from and all of that stuff. It was also interesting too see what people complained about. Not being able to smoke, having to leave kids toys.

It was odd that they DIDN'T actually sniff US with dogs. No doubt this post will be read by the FBI or homeland security or something. I'm sorry for giving away that little "secret", but we all know security by obscurity is bull anyway, so give it up.

Anyway, surprise surprise, it was no big deal, and I got here safe, about 4 hours late (4.10 AM.. officially 3:15, I have no idea how that works).

Alright, progress since last update.
Met an amuzing human ('rhetta) at thanksgiving at Purple/Brian's apt, hung out with her once since then. Also found out Katherine Barataone lives here. YAAY more peoples!
I finally got a debt card that works. Funny story about that, it turns out that numeric pads on keyboards are flipped vertically from numeric pads on ATMs. Who would've guessed? I think that tells enough of the story
I have a REAL drivers license now, this has made the ucharacteristically frequent trips to bars somewhat simpler.
I've been hanging out with a lot of germans and russians (this might explain the bars).
At work I'm learning a lot, and there's tons more to learn. I think I've got another week or so before I give up on trying to get background and just start doing shit. It's pretty awesome, and the people are awesome. I'm here now because I was having an interseting conversation with someone until quite recently.
I finally gave in and got a facebook account. I needed it for searching out some people (read, facebook stalking). And, as I should have expected it has already yeilded further utility in announcing to a good friend from highschool my general whereabouts. A friend who I had simply forgetten to inforom. I'm also mildly disturbed at the general rapiddity of response to friend requests.
I even have furniture now in the form of 2 Google bean-bag chairs.

Yup, so life is awesome. My new bike is STILL awesome. About the only thing left to desire is more vacation time and a hot/interesting (as if those two could be seperated) girlfriend.

Hey! I finally figured out why I couldn't post to LJ! My firefox configs were broken and it wouldn't accept cookies AT ALL EVER. I "rm -rf .mozilla" and everything is fine now.

So... lots to tell.

First, I'm working for Google now. I just moved to Mountain View. I start work on Monday (the 11/5). I took a month off between jobs to just hang, and learn to drive. I am going to be a "Site Reliability Engineer". I gave up trying to say what I'm doing, it's not "programmer" or "sysadmin" so there's no single word for it. I have a 1 bedroom about 1 1/4 mile from Google, which is AWESOME. I'm going to go carless for a while at least. I think I got more space than I need though... we'll see when my shit gets here.

During my break my dad and I flew out here to find an apartment, get a bank account out here, get renters insurence, get a bike, and visit my grandmother and aunt up in Sacramento. That was pretty awesome actually. I got to learn more about my dad, and we drove around and saw the coast range, Santa-Cruz, the Sierra Nevada's, and I got to see my grandma who I last saw when I was 12, and aunt who I've only barely even met before.

Our goat died on Tuesday night. Dad and I buried her Wednesday morning after he found her. My family now owns no goats, and no kitties. We're pretty sure both cats were eaten by hawks ::tear::. I miss fuzzy animals.

I have a driver's license, WOOHOO! thank you Daniel (my older brother). Currently it's a temp though, which makes some ID stuff annoying. I'm hoping Google will let me start work with just the temp and my college ID.

All of my stuff is being shipped from MA right now, so currently I have my laptop, my travel guitar, an extra shirt, my sarong, A sleeping pad and sleeping bag, and all of the stuff that I normally carry in my backpack.

I'm having some troubles with the bike I bought, but I should get that sometime this week. It's a shiny new cyclocross bike with 10-34 rear gear set, Surly cross-check frame, drops, and interrupter levers. I can't wait to try it out.
So far since coming here I have acquired:
a shower curtain and rings
a baking sheet
silverware
8 teacups (1 dollar)
basic cleaning and hygene essentials

I have walked about 35 miles in the last 3 days. The day before that I flew to Mountain view. The day before that I moved a huge amount of wood, buried a goat, and shipped everything I own. Exercise is a wonderful thing.

I've been hanging out with DKB and Dfontain some, so that's cool. Walked in the park yesterday. Yup... that's my life right now.

Got back from backpacking. Had a really good time. There are lots to tell, for details check out Jess' LivcJournal, I believe she's posting something like a trail log. Suffice to say that it was a rather epic Adventure. Including the rainbow family reuinion, fighting ermine, walking 25 miles or so in one day with a pack, old growth forests, getting lost, drunk hicks, running out of water, and amazing views etc. I'm currently looking for new housing from now till the end of september'ish, maybe a bit longer. Anybody got anything?

( Trail log )

Right... to those who responded to my last post.
I'm leaving PA at 8:24 and getting to CA at 1:22PM. So I'll probably get out into interesting places to wander around 2:30? I thaught I would get there a little earlier, but that's okay.

I don't know where people want to meet. I'm flying into the airport and planning on taking the Bart directly from there into SF. and wandering around for the afternoon. My plan was then to go back to the airport and pickup the hotel shuttle to the hotel, and cram a little more python that night.

So... people who know things about SF should suggest meeting places or some such. Otherwise I'll just get on the Bart going to east-SF and get off at the first interesting looking stop (you know, like after they start getting dense).

--------
I guess I could do a real LJ type post below this. Well... I'm at home, which will shortly no longer be my home. I'm moving my stuff to the basement of this house just before going backpacking next weekend with Jess till I come back on the 19'th (Kesden is giving us a ride out... he's awesome). About then I'm planning to magically find housing through September, and then I have no idea where I'm going.

So... anybody want stuff? I'm giving things away. I have a backpack I'd happily give away for example. a few bits of computer hardware, a fan, a Microsoft USB keyboard that crashes Linux, a couple belts, some wrist braces, and probably more that I'm not thinking of.

So yeah, that's what I'm up too. currently cleaning packing for this trip, packing over all, and getting rid of stuff. Feeling like allot of things are changing right now, but in a very... it's coming and I'm content with that, sort of way.

I'm flying out to San-Fran on Sunday morning, so I'll be there most of Sunday. I'm interviewing with Google on Monday from 10:00 to 3:00 and I'm flying out again at 22:00. I'm planning on exploring San-Fran for allot of Sunday before going back to the the airport and grabbing the shuttle to the hotel (before too late of course, sleep is advantageous).

Anyone around who wants to hang out? I don't have a car since I don't have a license, but I have $35 a day for food and they'll reimburse me for taxi's and busses. And of course, I am not completely poor.

So... I probably should've used this the LAST time I had interesting news to spread around. Like when I got a job at the PDL in the CIC at CMU. Oh well... Probly not too many people still have me listed as a friend on LJ, that's fine, I never post anyway.

Anyway, this is an efficient way to spread information, so, to anyone curious here goes.

Lizza and I just broke up. We're still really good friends. I guess Lizza just kindof... fell out of love. Stuff like that happens, it's okay. I'm sad, she's sad, but it's okay.

I supose that I could make all sorts of cracks about not posting because I'm not angsty... so now I have something livejournal worthy? Nah, it just occured to me that if I don't tell people via some mass network someone will ask me 2 years from now if we're still dating... hell, they probably still will.
Besides that I can say that I'm not really sure where I'm trying to go now. Maybe still San-Francisco area, maybe still to live with Lizza, but just as friends. I don't know, we'll see.

Yup, that's all that I have to say. Maybe I'll post again next year.

So... short story, my phone is broken, I'm supposed to get a new one by late thursday'ish.

Long story. The "F" (left) button on my phone died, after wacking it a few times it worked again, this was about a month ago. It's happened a couple of times since, but this last time I couldn't beat it into submission. One of these times I disassembled it and discovered that the buttons are much too "high-tec" to be repairable. So I gave up on my wonderful 8+ year old phone, and my dad is sending me a flip phone. It will only have a digital link, so no longer can I brag that I have 4 bars when you have none, but verizon is phasing out the analog anyway. So I'll see if I get a good enough link, and try it for a week or two. In any case, in this process I have... of course... lost everyone's phone numbers, again. You'd think I would make backups paranoically, but it can't be automated because my phone was so old, so I didn't. I'll try beating my phone up and see if I can get it to register the F key just one last time, but chances are, if I had your number it is now gone.

I'm reading snow-crash and I'm noticing a startling similarity to six-string samurai. You've got a main charactor who is both a samurai warrior (whatever, close enough), with swords and whit, who also has one other impressive skill. Guitar in one case, hacking in the other. You've got your small cute sidekick, a bit older in snow-crash, but there's a similarity in that she doesn't fight, and she can do a number of things the main charactor can't, surf, be small, pick locks, be not a dufus. In six-string samurai it's the sidekick can fix old mechanical shit.

Just an interesting parallel I think. Both awsome stories, with awsome imagary, and awsome charactors.

Right... so my life.
Still no job, working on that. Still here in Pittsburgh, not getting work done.
I went meta again and I'm working on an inference rule compiler, that turns a set inference rules into a function with a big fat case statement. The idea is to then write a compiler in inference rules, and then add to the inference rule compiler a proof checker, and write a proof of the compiler in that. Basically the concept is that this should be the only layer that you ever have to prove... except for the compiler that compiles it... oh well, it's a start.

In other news, lizza is coming back on saturday now, for all who are curious. I'm living in the same place as I did all summer, crooked house, but now with a new housemate Rebecca (I should really learn her last name). She seems pretty cool. Life is good, I'm feeling fit and exercising a lot, playing guitar regularly, all that good stuff. I'm up to about 60 songs typed into my computer that I can play. Now if I can just get some work done as well everything would be perfect. At some point I need to get a new E'mail before my login disappears, I need to bug some people from computer club, still haven't gotten around to it.

Lets see... My parents are getting me a water filter for my birthday, early in case I manage to get out again before it gets cold. I'm very excited about that, and trying my new backpack... OH man, backpacking base weight under 12 lbs, it's exciting. I'm also toying with using my laptop as an affects system for electric guitar. I'm having trouble making it out to get the necicary adapters though (simple, I just have to do it while things are open). Meeting lots of fun new people, there are already some pretty awsome freshman hanging around the clusters etc. So that's pretty neat. Yup yup, life goes, life goes.

If anyone wants to go climbing at any point tell me. I'm totally up for at least once a week, but I haven't been actually getting there. It's so mcuh more fun with other people. I should get my ass to campus so I can start pushing my new andrew config on people like I was trying to sell them a vacume cleaner. TTYL!

This is a cross post to the KGB B-board, but I figured I should put it here too, since I think people read LJ more than they read the B-board:

I posted something closer to what I think the default login should look like
in my public directory, at ~mbrewer/public/working_home. If anyone is having
trouble with andrew linux configs take a look there.

The config includes a fairly nice, user friendly fvwm2 setup for anyone needing
something to switch to from gnome. I actually based it on Ivan's configs. The
scheme is obviously biased towards my taste, but it's a good starting point,
and should be usable by pretty much anyone.
Many of the niceties I get asked to help repair regularly are included, some of
which are listed below:

- startup message with some simple info for new users
- generally reasonably nice looking X layout
- start button in the lower left hand corner
- menus with many of the most commonly used programs on it
(the items on which actually work)
- xlocking if your gone for a bit
(there are some bugs related to zsh that I'm avoiding for now)
- working delete/backspace keys
- working X forwarding when using ssh
- killing X logs you out
- login with a bash shell
- a nice command prompt
- basic vim configuration (with some sml fixes)

(Yes, I'm aware that this is too long a list to make a good presentation
slide... I don't care)

To anyone who decides to use the configuration, or pieces of it, It'd be
wonderful to get feedback on what features would be good to add, what's
annoying about the current setup, and just generally any ideas you have
on how I could setup a better user interface for your average CMU
student. Also.. please test this on new freshpersons... please!

We're also talking to the andrew people about a few things missing in the current system such as gnome, and 3D acceleration.

Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)

✓ I miss somebody right now.	✓ I don't watch much TV these days.	× I own lots of books.
× I wear glasses or contact lenses.	× I love to play video games.	× I've tried marijuana.
✓ I've watched porn movies.	× I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.	✓ I believe honesty is usually the best policy.
✓ I curse sometimes.	× I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.	✓ I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.  (Several in fact)

( it goes on... )

I just occured to me how much milage I walk/run. I figure I cover an average of 5+ miles a day (walk to campus is 1.6, though I sometimes bike, walking around town, occasional jogs, going on longer 10+ mile walks on weekends occasionaly). Given that in a month I do about 30+5 = 150 miles a month. So in 3 months thats 450 miles. Most shoes go between about 400 and 1000 miles before death. So killing a pair of shoes in 3-6 months is actually about right.

I.E. 2-3 pairs of shoes to do the entire AT, which also jives with what
I've heard.

I just hadn't really added all that up before. I always thaught of shoes
as a fairly long term item, not as a consumable. They really are though,
it's just that you don't notice if you have A) alot of shoes, or B) are
two young to think in multiple month timespans. Now I have 1 pair of
shoes that I use for everything, so they seem more like a consumable
item.

Actually everything is seeming more and more consumable. Laptops, clothing, most things you own are consumable on the 4 year timescale. Instruments, books, cameras, desktop computers, furniture, non-clothing camping gear are all non-consumables on any relevent timeframe. My desktop computer is now over 6 years old, and is still a fine machine.

It's not a big issue, it just changes the way you think of things and the way you buy things. The realization that so many things are really temporary changes how I feel about owning things, using things, wearing things out etc. Clothing is to be baught, used, and used up, same for shoes, food, bedding, laptops. You don't damage it intentionally, but it will wear out eventually, so protecting it too much is silly and pointless, because then it doesn't get used, and why did you buy it?

The powersupply for my laptop came in the mail today. I'm not sure if that was the problem or not, it looks like it might be a problem with the solder joint between the connector and motherboard. I just disassembled the whole laptop and I'm toying with it now. I had a little battery life and I just used that to rebuild reiserfs because all the power deaths during it's journal replay phase made it sad.

New screen hasn't come yet, I'm hoping that comes tomorrow so my laptop isn't left in it's disassembled state for too long. I'm doing the rebuild with no heat-sinks on machine, and I'm a little worried that it'll fry. I'm trusting the Intel speedstep stuff to reclock such that it doesnt overheat too much.

WEEEE! it looks like it needs a couple of drops of solder on the power connector, could I borrow a soldering iron and some solder from someone? It'll only take me a minute, but I currently am ironless.... ick, maybe I should just go out and buy a new one. The only other option I can think of is to run down the oakland radioshack and pick up an iron there.

Anyway. this weekend was awsome. Checked out the REI sale with avolkovi yesterday, then went to the beehive and he taught me GO (good game, I like the way the thinking works, it's fun). Then tyler joined us and we wandered by the river for a while, came back and shot some pool, and played disc until the rain picked up a bit too much. Then we watched a really cool anime called mushishi, AWSOMENESS.

Planning a backpacking trip for two weekends from now, Lizza is coming next weekend, there is a 4'th of July party going on tonight, YAY! Now if I can just get some work done, and get my laptop back online. Meh, life is good.